Trigger warning for sexual assault and domestic violence.
Last Thursday, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley let the sexual-assault and domestic-violence survivors of her state know that there aren’t enough of them to warrant a line item in the state budget–but that she’s super sorry about it and extends her “sympathy and encouragement.”
Her package of 81 vetoes from the 2012-2013 state budget included $1.5 million in earmarks for the Department of Health and Environmental Control. Among those public health-related vetoes was nearly half a million dollars for the SC Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (SCCADVAS), which (along with the other blocked earmarks) represents “only a small portion” of the affected population.
Veto 51: The SC Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, $453,680.
I am vetoing each of the earmarks in Section 90 of the Department of Health and Environmental Control’s budget. Each of these lines attempts to serve a portion of our population for which we extend our sympathy and encouragement, but nevertheless, it is only a small portion of South Carolina’s chronically ill or abused. Overall, these special add-on lines distract from the agency’s broader mission of protecting South Carolina’s public health. Each new special interest that wins an earmark takes more of DHEC’s attention away from its overall mission.
Just a small portion.
A recent government survey of rape and domestic violence reveals that in the U.S., one in five women say they’ve been sexually assaulted in their lifetimes, one in four say they’ve been beaten by an intimate partner, and one in six say they’ve been stalked.
In South Carolina, SCCADVASA reports that just in 2010, more than 5,000 victims of sexual assault–28.5 percent of whom were under the age of 11–received services from their centers, and nearly 1,500 cases of forcible rape were reported to law enforcement. In 2009, they report, 31 women were murdered as a result of domestic violence. And this is only looking at individuals who reported their assault and sought help from the Coalition; not factored in are women who went to other organizations or didn’t report their assaults to the police. (It’s estimated that as many as 54 percent of rapes go unreported nationally; I’m sure that number is smaller in South Carolina, which is obviously more sympathetic and encouraging.)
And since 1982, South Carolina’s sexual assault has been higher than the national average. So that “small portion” would be somewhere north of one in five South Carolinian women.
A vast majority of women who said they had been victims of sexual violence, rape or stalking reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, as did about one-third of the men.
Women who had experienced such violence were also more likely to report having asthma, diabetes or irritable bowel syndrome than women who had not. Both men and women who had been assaulted were more likely to report frequent headaches, chronic pain, difficulty sleeping, limitations on activity, and poor physical and mental health.
“We’ve seen this association with chronic health conditions in smaller studies before,” said LIsa James, director of health for Futures Without Violence, a national nonprofit group based in San Francisco that advocates for programs to end violence against women and girls.
“People who grow up with violence adopt coping strategies that can lead to poor health outcomes,” she says. “We know that women in abusive relationships are at increased risk for smoking, for example.”
But to Nikki Haley, that doesn’t constitute a public-health crisis worthy of funding–just a distraction.
Just a distraction.
Really.
I hope she receives a shitload of angry emails, letters and petitions letting her know how people feel about what she’s said. I hope she gets inundated with them, that it takes her time away from other issues she (and other politicians like her) deems more worthy of attention and funding. That might be just the sort of “distraction” that makes her think twice.
Not just in the US. In Cambridge, England, until recently the domestic violence helpline was only funded for one afternoon per week.
That’s so fucking horrible I barely know what to say.
Please forgive this potential derail, but I’m wondering at the definition(s) of rape here. Forcible rape is a very redundant term yet doesn’t seem to cover things like date rape and statutory. However the US has just changed its definition of rape to: “The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”
Is this term “forcible rape” employed solely by the author or is there another source I’m missing?
Secondly, will we grandfather in the definition of rape to all victims before the law passed?
Thirdly, if one can be reached, what is/should be the (un)official Feministe definition of rape? Does sexual coercion fall under this category? What about in cases of mutual drug use? Sweetheart laws?
I don’t want to bring in the trolls or start a flame war here, but as a person who is looking to categorize her own experience with this subject I’d like to hear everyone’s opinion.
Just FYI, if the first comment was stuck in mod, an identical comment will also end up stuck in mod. Please have patience, we’ll approve comments as soon as we can.
Thanks Jill, and apologies for the double post!
The use of “forcible rape” is as defined by South Carolina’s law enforcement division. We’re stuck with their somewhat limited definition for statistics on rapes reported to police in South Carolina, because of course they wouldn’t record reported assaults that didn’t fit their definition of “forcible rape.”
As for Feministe’s official or unofficial policy on the definition of rape, there isn’t one and (I think) shouldn’t be one. Most of us–bloggers and commenters–have our own personal thoughts about it, of course, but it’s so complex and such a personal violation that it wouldn’t be our place to try and define someone else’s experience for them.
This sounds like a state government which wants to enable trafficking and/or kid porn as its next corporate culture, if potential results count for anything.
Is anti-contraception, anti-abortion Haley planning to breed South Carolinians for these organized crime rackets? If not. why the veto?
Oh yeah, kids can’t vote.
South Carolina’s physically and electorally battered women can, though. I hope that Mittens is cited by the Securities and Exchange Commission for fraud before he reviews her stance and nominates her for his cold-hearted Veep.
[...] Assault and Abuse Survivors Just Distractions in South Carolina [...]
As someone who has worked in this field for 18 years in South Carolina, I am upset, to say the least.
Here is a letter from a victim to the Governor.
http://sccadvasa.tumblr.com/post/27126071492/dear-governor-haley-a-letter-from-a-survivor-in-south
[...] a GOP stalwart and fairly wretched person named Nikki Haley, defunded agencies designated to help victims of sexual assault and domestic violence because they represent such a such a “small portion” of the population. That small portion [...]
@7 – Caperton
Just a nitpick/question, but is this UCR (and the “forcible rape” definition) different from the federal standard for crime statistics (UCR)?
There was an old Feministe post on a recent change of this definition, but reading the text above it does not seem to match either version…
I’m elated, actually — the closeted extremists have dispensed with their coded dog whistles and now proudly voice their misogyny for U.S. voters to hear. What concerns me, though, is if conservative SC voters will support her even more for standing up to the darn radical feminist lobby, and if moderates actually care enough about sexual assault to change their votes over this…
I know this is pretty idealistic, but even if it was just one person a year…I mean, you obviously don’t need a half million dollars or a whole organization, but that person is still not a distraction. They’re a life.
I mean, dammit…this is like the first time I read about Deletha Word’s case (if you look it up, trigger warning for murder and ‘bystander effect’). How can you say, “I’m sorry, we just don’t have enough for you, so you’ll have to continue to suffer”? I know we see it all the time, but I just can never wrap my head around it.
The Liberal-Nationals in Queensland recently defunded the AU$120 000 Sisters Inside program, which supports women prisoners (including after release), for supposedly financial reasons. It costs the state AU$70 000 per year to imprison someone; if the program keeps two women out of prison for one year each (and they damn well do better than that) they’ve saved the state AU$20 000.
These things aren’t about financial efficiency or distractions or whether the community sector is helping enough people to justify their funding, because there’s no positive outcome sufficient to convince Republicans or Liberal-Nationals or whatever particular brand of soulless scumbag your political system hosts to fund programs that help the marginalised. If you need assistance, you’re never going to be worth it.
I really hope that the General Assembly in Columbia call a special session and zero out all of the funding going to the Governor’s Mansion and zero out all of the pay that Haley and her misogynistic entourage is getting – and move ALL that funding to domestic violence and sexual assault shelters instead. The Cumbee Center in Aiken will likely shut down due to Haley’s reckless vetoes. I wish she’d come to domestic violence survivors in Aiken, Allendale, Bamberg, Barnwell, Edgefield, Hampton, McCormick, Orangeburg and Saluda counties and tell them that domestic violence is just “distractions”.
Better yet, I wish that she’d come to Hephzibah, Ga. and tell Tiffany Salter’s family that domestic violence is a “distraction”. Ms. Salter was murdered by her boyfriend one week ago today.
http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/Hepzibah__161663905.html?099
She is disgusting. No wonder why the people in Bamberg – as well as in Bamberg County in general – are fed up to the gills with her and overwhelmingly voted against her in 2010, despite the fact she grew up there prior to moving to Lexington.
Sorry for coming on here two days after this post, but I am just livid right now at this disgrace in Columbia. 2014 just can’t come fast enough for me, so that I can vote her out of office.
62 minutes ago, Planned Parenthood named Haley as the Chump of the Week for the vetoes.
http://www.womenarewatching.org/article/a-tale-of-two-vetoes-governor-haley-is-chump-and-governor-nixon-is-champ
While we are on the topic of rape, no article about Tosh? Really?
South Carolina is in the top 10 with the highest percentage of the poor, albeit at 10th place. I guess the governor just does not have the money for programs like that. What percentage of tax is used to pay off the debt to the American central bank? What need is there to pay off the debt to the American central bank? It aint like the federal reserve bank will foreclose on America and who is going to miss all that money? The federal reserve isnt privately owned, or is it?